Monday, June 5, 2006

Sensationalastic!

It took the accumulation of three-times the firepower used in the Oklahoma City bombing for Canadian authorities to arrest 17 suspected terrorists, and now Canada’s on the map...five years after the fact, we in the Great White North now have own very own nonstop news story, complete with the requisite fear and wild speculation one would expect from Canadian media outlets who finally have a story to write breathlessly about. The vilification has begun:

Pure evil, right? Forget the apparent Predator-like heat-seeking lens on the cameraman; the drawn-in likeness of what looks to be the lawyer on the right proves the lengths to which we will go to personify the story, to put a face with the evil.
Best of all, this news gives our Prime Minister, Stephen "Cold Eyes of a Baby-Eater" Harper, the excuse to explain to us why terrorists would want to bomb us...which is sort of like a seagull just missing us with a shit-bomb, and as we look to the sky someone explains to us how the bird’s intestinal-biology works: the point is that we almost got shit on, not why a bird shits.

Unfortunately, it’s not because of "what we stand for", but rather because we have Canadian troops "cleaning up" the Taliban in Afghanistan. Oh, I’m sorry, it’s not because we somehow elected a Prime Minister who immediately sent troops overseas, a Dubya-Juniour who rode into office on the back of a massive Liberal Sponsorship Scandal but still only won by a hair? I see; there’s NO correlation between our newfound interest in the "Fight Against Terror" and this sudden foiled plot? It’s just coincidence...

I love that people are surprised by all of this; that the bombing in Britain was viewed on the same level as any other attacked foreign embassy, that we all engage in the "that’s-terrible-but-it’s-across-the-pond" syndrome until it’s in our backyard. These terrorists were caught, and that’s great, but that’s what the authorities are for, isn’t it? I mean, kudos for actually preventing an attack, but since these bomb-ingredient-buyers were found in Pickering and Kingston, well...doesn’t that make our troops in Afghanistan unnecessary? If the terrorists are RIGHT HERE, why are we over THERE?